Resolving to Be Resolute

I heard a discussion of resolutions for the New Year on the radio recently, focusing on ones that people could keep. One was to start smoking, another was to gain 15 pounds, and yet another was to keep drinking.

Obviously, that's negative thinking, but it was funny in the moment. Somehow I think it would be extremely easy to achieve such poor goals, but it should be just as easy to achieve the good ones.

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night and listened to a meditation tape. It was the first time I had heard the entire tape, since I usually fall asleep or go into a meditational state part of the way through. At the end of the tape, in which the female speaker leads the listener through a series of images to imagine, the last one was in a field of golden light. In the light I imagined my year as a series of triumphs. Health, happiness and success were constant. I imagined it in the light of the spirit, which naturally brings a blessed year.

My goals are simple, actually. They include reading a passage from the Bible once a day, working out three times a week, getting a specific children's book I've written published, reading a book a week and finishing the novel I started.

Most of all, though, I plan to believe that I can do them -- and I hope that will lead to achieving many, if not all, of those resolutions.

Also, I could strive to follow the words of wisdom I read recently on a Celestial Seasonings tea box, some of which I can say I already have:

1. Watch a sunrise at least once a year.
2. Plant flowers every spring.
3. Look people in the eye.
4. Compliment three people every day.
5. Live beneath your means.
6. Choose your life's mate carefully. From this one decision will come ninety percent of all your happiness or misery.
7. Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring and integrity, they think of you.
8. Don't postpone joy.
--H. Jackson Brown, Jr., Life's Little Instruction Book